D&D 5E Forgotten Realms version?

[soulcatcher78]

Grey Box (original boxed set) might be harder to find in a complete form for a decent price.
2E box set might be easier to find at this point and is pretty loose as far as detail goes.
3.5E Hardcover is well done and does the best job of bringing most (if not all) of the previous lore between 2 covers.
4E Hardcover as noted above makes a huge time jump (100 years) and has already had some of it's changes reversed (Abeir and Toril are once again separated) but it's the most recent of the sources - likely the least expensive to find now on ebay or similar.

All of these are a good place to start and as always you can make any changes you need to so that it fits your style and campaign needs.

If you wish to stay canon just decide which RSE (Realms Shaking Events) you wish to include (2E brought us the Time of Troubles and wiped out Assassins and a few gods killed for instance). A copy of the Grand History of the Realms or Lost Empires of Faerun are a nice read if you want to add some flavor and would rather start somewhere in the past (pre Grey Box Realms).

 

[pukunui]

Any rumours of a 5E sourcebook.

Yes, there are rumors of one being in the works. Nothing concrete, though.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

Yes, there are rumors of one being in the works. Nothing concrete, though.

Back in November (October?) Mike Mearls at WoTC specifically said they weren't, at the time, working on an FR campaign setting for 5E, and that they intended to figure out how they're going to approach the setting in the new year. As it stands, there is no announcement of a 5E FR campaign setting book and if there is going to be one at all it won't be coming for a very long time. The one hope that we do have is that we know, via posts at Candlekeep, that Ed Greenwood (the original creator of the realms) has been working on FR materials for something.

To go back to the original question -- I agree with the other posters here that recommended the 3.0 FRCS as the best version of the realms, and there's plenty of other great 3E material to along with it, including a number of excellent regional sourcebooks and history guides. I love Silver Marches and The Shining South personally.

4E introduced absolutely massive changes to world, however. Entire countries were nuked, continents disappeared, lots of people (and gods) died in the 100-year time jump. So the 3E version isn't great if you want as close to the current canonical picture of the world as possible. Allegedly in 5E, they're reverting many of those changes, since 4E did not go down at all well with FR fans.

 

[Staffan]

To be honest, if I was going to start playing in FR using 5e without previous experience I would probably go for the 2e boxed set.

Yes, the 3e FRCS was awesome at the time, but a big part of that was that it had plenty of rules for showcasing the setting - things like regional feats (feats that were a tad better than the baseline but could only be taken by people from certain places), new domains to fit the plethora of gods, dozens of subraces to differentiate one kind of elf from another, and such. This information is fairly useless in 5e. The 2e boxed set, on the other hand, is almost all fluff, and particularly the Heartlands (Cormyr, Dalelands, Sembia, the Moonsea, the Vast, the Dragon Coast, the Western Heartlands) get plenty of development.

If you can find the actual 2e boxed set, it also comes with four poster maps: two large-scale showing pretty much the whole of Faerûn, and two smaller-scale ones showing the Heartlands. It also has plastic hex overlays that make it easier to measure distance on the maps, and a whole bunch of cardboard handouts showing various holy symbols, way-runes, and other cool stuff. The 3e FRCS only has one map, at even larger scale than the large-scale boxed set map (120 miles per inch instead of 90), but it is on the other hand really pretty. It also has zoomed-in maps in the book of the Eastern Heartlands (Cormyr, Sembia, Dalelands, part of the Moonsea; at 40 miles per inch to the small-scale box set maps at 30) and of the North (which the 2e boxed set doesn't have, though there was a North boxed set as well for 2e).

 

[DongMaster]

One can but hope there will be a new source book.

BTW, does anyone know what year it is in 5th ed Faerun?

 

[HobbitFan]

Hey DM,

1489 DR is the current year according to information given by the Adventurer's League (organized play) people.

BTW, questions like this are exactly why WOTC needs to get on the ball and give fans some 5E Realms update information.

 

[Nebulous]

The 3rd edition FR campaign book was a thing of beauty.

 

[pukunui]

1489 DR is the current year according to information given by the Adventurer's League (organized play) people.

Source: http://dndadventurersleague.org/tyr...r-adventures/phlan-during-tyranny-of-dragons/

 

[SirAntoine]

I recommend the 1st Edition campaign setting, fondly called "the grey box". If you don't mind the content of novels, the 2nd Edition setting is also quite good.

 

[reelo]

I recommend the 1st Edition campaign setting, fondly called "the grey box". If you don't mind the content of novels, the 2nd Edition setting is also quite good.

Ah, the Grey Box. Actually the first RPG-related item I bought as a pre-teen. I discovered it at my local game store and, having vaguely heard about D&D before, bought it because it said something like "everything you need to play in the FR yada yada"
Boy was I wrong. I've read it through countess times but could never wrap my head around those strange concepts back then. I must still have it somewhere. At least I hope so!